‘I added more hair to my “if I go missing binder”…apparently for DNA to be used from hair samples, it not only needs to be taken from the root, but it needs to include the follicle too…I plucked about twenty. I’m not sure I can do much more to help authorities in case I go missing but I hope they’ll never need this,’ says Jenny of @savor.it.all on TikTok, while adding to a binder titled ‘if I go missing’.
The hashtag #ifigomissingfile currently has 26.4million views on TikTok – a trend that has been soaring since ‘Crime Junkie’ host Ashley Flowers mentioned the folders on her podcast – with countless videos of women sharing details of the files they have created to help family members and authorities piece together evidence if they go missing. The files contain samples of anything, from hair, fingerprints, handwriting and photos of tattoos to a list of exes and daily schedules. The fact that only women seem to be doing this is a terrifying insight into where womens' heads are at right now.
With disturbing cases of male violence against women seemingly on loop in the news, combined with the alarming surge in crime within the police force – one in 100 police officers in England and Wales faced a criminal charge last year, a figure that has skyrocketed by 590% since 2012 – these folders pose deep questions about the trust we have in government organisations. It’s alarming, considering that in the UK, someone is reported missing every 90 seconds, and according to the National Crime Agency’s 2019-2020 records, 43.4% of missing people were women.
But is the rise in people making these folders a sensible precaution fuelled by the global pandemic of male violence against women, or is it an unhealthy trend fuelled by our true crime obsession?
The Idaho murders, the disappearance of Nicola Bulley – we're hooked on playing armchair detectives to real-life atrocities.
‘The world is a scary place, the online world is a scary place… You’ve got to protect yourself,’ says TikToker Patricia Brown, (@youcancallmepatches), who has been updating her folder for the last year.
‘I was getting tattoos all the time that my family didn’t know about to the point where, if something were to happen, my family probably wouldn't be able to identify them, so I started to take photos of them all,' she explains. ‘This sounds really morbid, but if only a limb is found, then they can match the tattoo in the picture.’ Patricia also explains how she uses her folder to document the places she frequents, her handwriting samples, passwords and bank statements. She also explains how she uses the app ‘Find my Friends’ with her family, significant other and friends in order to see where they are.
Does this extreme level of documentation lead to increased anxiety, I ask her. ‘I just want to know that I'm okay and the people I love are okay, which is why I push for people to have these folders,’ Patricia says. ‘I think I know my sister or best friends, but I don't know what apps my sister’s on; she just got back into the dating world. That's terrifying. I don't know who she's meeting. I don't know what she's doing. So I'm glad to have her location’.
I wonder if we’re turning to this trend as a coping mechanism and form of control over something that feels beyond us. For some people, acting practically can be a way to manage anxieties, like making a to-do list when we are stressed. By tackling the smaller scale manageable tasks like collecting samples, we might be able to process the much bigger anxieties like worrying about the outcomes if we were to go missing.
Steve Gaskin, a Former Scotland Yard Detective and criminal psychologist based in the UK, said: ‘I’m retired from the force now, but I hang my head in shame with what’s going on at the moment’, he says. ‘I think there is benefit in having a folder that can be handed over to the police, especially in cases where people go missing abroad. I’m actually adding a free download of a folder to my website to help people who might want to make themselves one too. But I do think it’s important to stress that the fear of going missing far exceeds the reality. If a woman finds comfort in making one, then that is fine but what is extremely important to mention is that it absolutely should not be on women to have to do this’.
‘The only problem with these folders I could see’, says Steve, ‘if someone was to live with a coercive partner, I'd be worried about them forging one. It wouldn’t be difficult to remove certain pieces of evidence or adulterate them to fit a narrative. I’d advise people to tell trusted members only that you’re making one’.
The danger of forgery, as Steve has mentioned, is definitely something that should be taken into account when posting about the folders online to a large audience. It’s sadly another terrifying example of pre-planning for the worst case scenario. The ‘if I go missing folder’ hashtag might have been a product of a true crime podcast, but the sheer amount of people talking about it proves the real issue at hand here is women feeling the need to make these folders in the first place.
